The purpose of this post is to clearly spell out my intended use of each one. This way you can make an educated decision on which you may want to subscribe or follow me and my antics around the web.

Twitter (Professional)

I use Twitter for SharePoint stuff. This includes posting links to my blogs, announcing new web casts and white papers, links to SharePoint content, general SharePoint news for the community, and networking with SharePoint people. You will occasionally see non-SharePoint techy stuff on my twitter but it is done under the spirit of SharePoint community. For example when I was at SharePointTechCon several of us went on a field trip to downtown San Francisco. During the trip I had tweets talking about riding in the trunk and stuff. Since I was with SharePoint people at a SharePoint conference I felt this appropriate for Twitter. You will not see tweets about my dogs or how much airports suck.

I do also subscribe to the Twitter search for the term SharePoint. So I will see people with SharePoint question tweets and will try to respond to them with suggestions as appropriate. Also, on Twitter I follow some people who are non SharePoint. Typically I am doing this only to consume their information, if I start wanting to “tweet” with them about non SharePoint stuff on a regular basis I will start a new Twitter account at that time.

You are welcome to follow me at http://twitter.com/shanescows. I do not follow everyone who follows me but I do generally check a new followers profile and see what they have recently tweeted, if I am interested I follow them. Don’t take it as an insult if I don’t follow you, I may have been super busy when you started following me or you may have just had a run of tweets I didn’t care for. It is a free country Tweet as you would like.

Unfollowing: I will typically unfollow people for things like posting they lyrics of songs to be annoying or for just generally posting dumb crap more often than good stuff. If I unfollow you, sorry, but your and my ideas of what Twitter is for have changed. No big deal.

Facebook (Personal)

This is where I post things like “We got tickets to the Cyclones game in a suite tonight” or “The weather in Tampa is awesome”. This is for my friends old and new to keep up with my personal tidbits. I also enjoy reading friends updates of the tidbits of what they are doing.

As a rule I don’t play the Facebook games. No snowball fights or birthday apps for me. Not to say you don’t enjoy them but I don’t use Facebook for that. Also, 95% of the time I use Facebook (FB) mobile to get information so none of the other crazy FB stuff works there.

Are you looking for how to upgrade from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Microsoft Office Server 2007 or want to know what is an SSP? This is the place for you. I only post pertinent, professional SharePoint information on this blog, typically covering the administrator’s point of view. Sometimes I have lots of post (like when the next version of SharePoint is in Beta) other times they are few and far between. Either way this is a great resource if you are a SharePoint administrator who doesn’t want any noise, just good information. I promise if it made it to this blog you need to know about it.

You will see no personal post on this blog. Though I have been known to give away free stuff and discount codes to training classes.

Comments – I generally approve all valid (not spam) comments to my blog within a few days but I do stink at responding to comments. Sorry. If you have a SharePoint question you need answered you should look to different community resources such as the Microsoft SharePoint forums or the SharePoint helpdesk my company offers. http://msmvps.com/shane and then there is an RSS feed you can subscribe to.

ShanesCows – Personal Blog (Personal)

This is where I will say things people will probably hold against me. 🙂 I am about to become a Dad for the first time so should be lots of fun things to post. Also, I travel A LOT. So I always have things to post about airports, airlines, hotels, rental cars, and strange cities. I really am looking forward to this new blog as an outlet. Might be interesting, might be lame, guess we will all find out together. Hopefully the kid will be able to look back at it one day and see the embarrassing things I said about him as a baby. I will print out stories and hand them to his dates when he gets older.

http://www.shanescows.com will be the location of the blog, interestingly enough it is actually going to be hosted on SharePoint.

I don’t participate here as much as I should but occasionally I pop in to answer questions.

Summary

So I realize this is a lot to consume and I don’t expect you to agree with how I am using everything. That is cool; you very well may do things differently. I just wanted to clearly state the way I am using these different outlets so you can know what to expect of me. I meet a lot of great people from conferences, classes I teach, and from virtual communities so I wanted to make it easier to connect and follow up with all of you in this virtual world.

My lovely wife Nicola Young and my rock star employee John Ross just published a new book called MOSS Explained: An information workers deep dive into MOSS 2007. How cool!

This book is the logical progression of the information worker. Lots of books target what is a list and basic stuff but this is the first book (that I know of) to really say “OK, now here is how you rock out the cool features.” Even better it is written not by to uber geeks (like the books we normal write) but instead by two people who work with IWs everyday. Hell, Nicola was a psychology major and only my evilness forced her into the land of IT.

Sorry for the late notice. What I am going to attempt to pull off is a live customer audit of their SharePoint farm. Should be a lot of fun.

Its Flu Season – How is your SharePoint Server Feeling?Instructor: Shane YoungDate: February 16, 2009Time: 2 – 3 p.m. ESTPrice: Free!Over the past couple of years one of the most common requests Shane has received at SharePoint911 is server install/configuration validation. And through these reviews he has found some very common mistakes and some very bizarre things. So, for the first time EVER, Shane is going to show the world what he does when he conducts a server review. In this one hour seminar, Shane will point out the little nooks and crannies to check for problems and things that are just good ideas. This one should be quite interesting to see the progression and you may even pickup a tip or two along the way.Register today!

Last year Todd and I sold out our precon event on SharePoint Upgrades and Administration

and it was such a fun filled comedy fest we were invited back this year. Sadly it will be the same jokes but all new educational material. Also, last year we gave away a Zune and an XBOX 360. No promises for this year’s giveaways but… I typically like to offer up all of Todd’s paycheck for giveaways cause I am nice that way.

Why Governance? Who needs Governance of SharePoint anyway? The short answer? EVERYONE! Governance is crucial to keeping that awesome SharePoint environment you setup awesome. A brief description follows:

This session takes you through the process of developing a successful implementation plan for your Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) deployment. Determining the goals and vision, stakeholders, level of customization or development, rollout, phasing, intranet, extranet, and Internet considerations and taxonomy of your portal are all discussed through lectures, hands-on experience, and case studies. This class not only covers what you should do, but also real world scenarios and best practices.